I didn’t see anyone mention this event and I’m curious how people feel about it?
Interested? Not at all?
“A new Starcraft game sounds nice, but I’ll be in the nursing home by 2030”?
Diablo 5, too soon?
Blizzcon was super disappointing in my opinion, I am a Warcraft fanboy so was excited to see new WC3 content, but the Diablo 5 announcement was terrible as was the Starcraft reveal, both too far away and Diablo 5 essentially puts the final nails in D4s coffin.
I saw a comment referring to the reveals as “AND THE CROWD WENT MILD!” which sums it up well
Microsoft presently forcing all studios to announce new stuff they aren’t really working on.
WC3 expansion is awesome. WoW Classic 2.0 thing seems cool for those people. New Overwatch guy is cool.
Not sure what else one is to expect at the moment.
The opening ceremony was definitely lacking in charisma, can’t deny that. In fact, the later (game specific) panels during the event were much more interesting than the opening.
Some people are really good at their job of engineering, design, management, etc. But not everyone is the type to be a presence on stage. And the people on stage during the opening ceremony really lacked what it takes to stand up there and sell all they had to sell. Personally, I was waiting for Chris Metzen to show up, but alas, he was nowhere to be found. Metzen is that type of “Blizzcon main stage” personality that can really hype up a crowd.
I will say, I think they undersold WoW Forever, because that thing is bigger and more transformative than what they showed. Not only is it a fresh start to Vanilla, both in the narrative and graphical aspects, but also proof that Blizzard does listen to their community’s wishes (as long as they can make money from it). One of the hardest things to do in gaming is nostalgia updates; make it the same, but different. “Make it not how it was, but how I remember it”. If they nail that one, it’s gonna be a good time for WoW fans. I’ll be able to tell you more because the beta drops today and I’ll definitely be playing it, because… Why even have a life outside of work, when I can live in Azeroth again lol
As for StarCraft Dominion and Diablo 5… Yeah, they’re far away still, but SC Dominion in particular has been in the works for at least 2 years, if not 3. It was one of the worst kept secrets ever since they hired Dan Hey (the previous Far Cry lead).
Diablo 5 being the “final nail in the coffin for D4” I don’t really agree with in this context. The release date is not even up, and D4 will get a good couple of years of live service and updates. I think they showed it off too soon, probably in line with what Epos said: “Show something”.
And finally, it warmed my heart seeing that Blizzard acknowledged that StarCraft 1 and 2 still matter to them, as well as doing the same for Heroes of the Storm. Those two IPs were intentionally “locked in the closet” because Bobby saw no value in either. HotS really never got a fair shot, so it’s nice to see it getting some love.
As someone who has ALWAYS hated the live service side of Diablo, whenever it is “done” means it’s finally “finished” and I can feel comfortable playing.
You definitely got a point there.
I’m a D2 lover myself, so “live service Diablo” was never a thing for me anyway. I still play D2 like a single player story game.
But there are people who like their game being updated and expanded as they play.
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Have you tried Grim Dawn? The closest thing I have found to a spiritual successor to Diablo 2. 3 expansions, no live service, offline playable. Amazing game!
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I tried them all, basically, at some point.
Nothing hits even close to D2, because both story and gameplay.
Most ARPGs presume that nobody cares about the story and everyone just wants sockets and an infinite grind. It’s the same false presumption that RTS developers have; nobody cares about a good campaign, everyone just wants to 1v1. Nobody also has the money that Blizzard had for production value of everything
Well, I disagree xD
I have complicated feelings on it, but Lost Ark has a lot of effort on the story. It’s inconsistent in execution since it started development in 2012, early game there’s so much “Press G for next line of dialogue” it borders on visual novel. They eventually added in an update Shift+G to skip the encounter).
It is a “chosen one” plot, but it is The Chosen, you know, Messiah opening the gates of heaven, going down to hell to overcome death itself. Doesn’t pull punches about making the player participate at funerals or parents dealing with death of their children; the anime action highs are so high I wish they’d rework the early chapters like Warframe did, no one wants to hear “it gets good after X hours”… in fact, players make use of free event level skip tickets, which is a way to fix it I guess, the events made an attempt last year to catch up returning players
I made great use of the free gear upgrades they give away during the summer events, I ain’t grinding dailies lol
You know what really grinded my gears while I was playing through Diablo 4 this year (for the first time)?
So I was playing the campaign, wanting to experience the story and… The game kept constantly reminding me that I can skip the campaign with “this one button” and jump straight into the endgame.
Like, bro. How much do you value this campaign you made if you constantly keep reminding me how easy it is to skip all of it? Wouldn’t you want people to experience it because of how much production value and work went into making it?
Like, I’d understand if the game recognized that I already completed it and played on a second character. Then sure, I guess it makes sense offering me to skip something I’ve already seen and jump into the endgame. But like, for the first ever playthrough? It’s not like they don’t have the data to recognize that.
And then, to add insult to injury, by the time I made it out of the second region… And I didn’t move regions until I did ALL of the side quests and dungeons (at least once), I was so strong that I basically never had to use any strategy at all. Like I had the gear and the skills unlocked to the point where basically all the enemy hordes died with one Hydra cast. So I just ran around, didn’t even stop and just pressed the “Hydra button”. And the game refused to let me move beyond the “3rd lowest difficulty” (can’t remember what it was; maybe “Nightmare”) unless I… Say it with me: “Skipped the campaign”.
So I powered through, did all the main and side content, saw some interesting story beats in it, even found some Mythic level gear, but it seriously soured my experience because 80% of the whole journey was me just face-rolling all of the combat with zero effort. Like, I soloed one of the World Bosses! By myself! One of the “Oh you’ll need a whole group to do this” selling points in the new Diablo game… I killed them by myself. And to be clear, I’m not some Diablo wunderkind. I didn’t google like, the meta build or anything. I just assigned my skill points to whatever sounded cool and made sense to me based on what the description said. The game showered me with loot and even perk-reroll materials, to an absurd degree.
That was just so bloody stupid…
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Maaaaan. I had my Diablo 3 experienced ruined by getting talked into joining a friend group’s run (I was still halfway through) and they were way higher level doing endgame stuff. I died a lot, got showered with OP (for where I was) gear, level boosted, and then the rest of the game was pointless.
I still finished it and RoS but it really kinda messed up my enjoyment. Similar thing except yours was BY the game!
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I was watching the panel for Wow Forever and I almost resubbed for it. But as the buildup to the beta release I felt that this is going to be no different than any other WoW release. People will datamine the entire game, make addons that are mandatory in high level group play, and optimize the fun and discovery out of the game. And I’m already seeing that a bit with it, which kinda sucks. I’ll see when it actually releases how much of a difference it is.
Diablo and Starcraft are hard to get hyped for because they’re so far out. It’s like getting hyped for that new KOTR, it probably won’t even come out until the next gens are well into their lives. This felt more like a showcase for Microsoft so they don’t get gutted than for the fans.
I get what you mean, and it’s unavoidable. People literally make a living deconstructing video game mechanics now and it’s an arms race already.
That being said, I personally don’t really care about that stuff. Like, I’m a late bloomer in WoW, only started playing when Classic came out. I made it to 60 twice, with zero addons and minimal reading about stuff (only when I was like really stuck and couldn’t fumble my way out of it). I don’t care about 40 person raids and dungeons sort of always work without being meta af. Hell, I main a prot paladin, which is considered by most as the “worst tank in the game”, but do I care? No. I’m having fun exploring the world and the quests and such.
But that’s me. Just saying “Well, don’t be a google gamer” is not really helping anyone. If you’re invested in the game, the end-game will come for you at some point. But the classic wow journey to max level is in many ways more interesting than farming Onyxia and Molten Core, for many people (including me). If I get enough enjoyment out of another 300 hours or 500 hours or whatever, that’ll be ok with me.
So my take would be: Don’t think about others solving the game. Try to solve it yourself, for yourself, if you can.
That’s what I’m gonna do. And the beta is pretty sweet so far. I’m having fun and slowly exploring. I’m only at level 10, which is fine for 3 days of an hour or two of playing.
P.S. Maybe I made it sound like getting to 60 is the only non-endgame way to play. It’s not. You can also go and try to do every single quest in the game, and there are like hundreds if not over 1000. Seeing Azeroth with zero exclamation marks is something really dope. And it takes longer than getting to 60, which is between 200 and 300 hours easy, if you don’t “google game”.